I’ve come to realise that there are two things a refugee always carries with them: their language, and their food. This is a truth I grew up with, and one that is difficult to avoid thinking about in today’s climate.
My family fled Kashmir when I was six. We arrived in Jammu with little luggage; there was simply not enough time. Yet for all the upheaval, one thing remained unchanged: come meal time, our plates held the same fragrant yakhnis, the strands of sun-dried bottle gourd with mutton and tangy, sour eggplant that they always had.
My stints at the Culinary Institute of America, corporate hotels, and a few well-reputed North American and European restaurants eventually led me back home, and my long-term schemes were starting to take shape. Noma restaurant in Denmark, to me, was exciting not because of the food but because of how well Chef Redzepi managed to acquaint himself with the region and harness it. In doing so, he also succeeded in entirely transforming the face of Nordic cuisine. By the time I moved back to India, it was painfully obvious that our culinary landscape was seriously underutilising our local produce, and was instead looking outward rather than within.
And so that was where Masque’s journey began, nearly two years before our doors opened – travelling from farm to farm, setting up our own, exploring both the country’s fertile belts and the less so, to see what they had to offer. Along the way, I ended up back in a Jammu & Kashmir that was striding into the 21st century while still, thankfully, retaining its vast, relatively untouched beauty. I’ve flown into Srinagar at least four times since, and each visit leaves me surprised and inspired.
MY PASSION FOR INGREDIENTS
The first time I ever saw sea buckthorn was in Denmark. Years later, the Kashmiri farmers we met with told us of these orange berries that grow wild in Ladakh, near the Nubra Valley – tiny, seeded and sour, surrounded by bushes so thorny that they were often simply used as fencing. That first visit, geared with army gloves, sticks, and a couple of willing locals, we thwacked our way through nearly 50 kilos of it to bring home for research and development.
Finding the sea buckthorn was a definitive moment: I felt simultaneously excited, yet silly for being oblivious to what had been in my backyard the whole time. And each trip throws up new surprises – our last sojourn to Nubra led us down roads winding between endless fields of wild lavender, prompting many a stop to gather it for our bartenders. Ladakh also took us to Sanjak, a town my father was once posted in. We would spend our summer days as children amongst its grand total of maybe 20 homes, plucking fresh apricots straight off the tree. I went back to the orchards last year, hungry for the fruit but also to speak with their caretakers, craving more information on how best to use them. The larger varieties, I learned, were saved for dehydration; the smaller varieties were eaten fresh.
THE ELUSIVE MOREL
The most tasking of the trips was when we went in search of the elusive morel. India’s answer to truffles, these mushrooms too were always a delicacy growing up, strictly reserved for special occasions. The window within which they grow is short and unpredictable – they’re said to sprout after the first thunderstorm, interspersed under oak trees with no distinguishable pattern. We traversed three regions on our hunt, struggling to acclimatise with eyes glued to the ground. The first, Shopian, yielded one at a time, few and far between. Kupwara and Dachigam blessed us with scant handfuls at a go, the former offering up large, plush caps with the texture of honeycomb.
Perhaps the most familiar tastes of my childhood, however – and arguably the least glamorous – are in the greens. Collard greens, dandelion and mallow leaves are staples of a Kashmiri diet, usually blanched and cooked in a combination of mustard oil, red chillies and veri masala. You often see them growing unruly in the wild, though local markets supply them in abundance.
EATING GREEN
One wishes the difficult part would end with the sourcing, but sadly the greens still haven’t found their way on to our menus as prominently as I would like. Recipe tests have yielded a dandelion sauce drizzled over fish, a plate that never left the kitchen; the collard greens are currently cooked with kohlrabi and pickles and stuffed into a miniature pao which, thankfully, did. Research and recipe development with these ingredients is often a monumental task, compounded by their limited quantities and the risk of anything going to waste. Our first batch of apricots were so sweet and juicy that our initial attempts at making a jam might have induced diabetes in our patrons, until we succeeded in balancing it out with a yoghurt sorbet and no added sugars. The sea buckthorn too went through more trials than I can count, mixing with carrot juice in a dozen different proportions until it resembled the iced lollies of our childhoods, elevated atop a peppery mousse. The morels have served us well over the past two years in several different forms – once stuffed into lamb, another time presented alone in three different textures of mushroom.
I have come to appreciate the successes and failures as part of the learning curve, and while often frustrating, I cannot complain. The search for these ingredients both took me home and gave me direction and inspiration. They led me back to my mother’s kitchen, where the wealth of those generations before me waited patiently to disburse their knowledge, and I find myself now constantly chasing after more.
